Recently Microsoft made Windows Media Player version 10 available for users of Windows XP. What Media Player 10 is mainly about is the MSN/Music Stores, Synchronizing media with portable devices (including file conversion), and a new streamlined UI. It does also include some other nice improvements such as in the Media Library, version 10 helps you to manage all your content in a central place (purchased music and video, music ripped from CDs, recorded TV), manual aspect ratio controls for video and built-in MP3 encoding at up to 320kbit to name just a few.

There is a fair amount of the difference between version 9 and 10, on first inspection you might think the change is pretty skin deep because the new UI does do a very good job of keeping menus hidden away, maximizing available space for video playback (which is achieved by moving the buttons usually found on the left side of the player in v9 i.e. ‘Now Playing’ and ‘Media Library’ to the top of the Window). It’s worth taking a look through the URLs below to see all of the new features, some of them, such as the aspect ratio control are nicely tucked away and it would be possible to miss it J On the whole I am pretty happy with version 10, I don’t think I’d want to go back to version 8 or 9 now.

Windows XP Installer:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/download/download.aspx

What’s new in Media Player 10:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/mp10/default.aspx

New Design:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/mp10/newdesign.aspx

Portable Device Support:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/mp10/devicesupport.aspx

Music Stores:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/mp10/onlinestores.aspx

Smart Jukebox:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/mp10/jukebox.aspx